With collaborative editing, script creators can code in real time without interrupting each other. That’s a step in virtual collaboration, and it’s one of the things Roblox is working on. Roblox is also creating fully automated translation so that a game created in one region can be enjoyed all over the world.
And the developer economics part is getting advances with improvements in the UGC marketplace. Creators can share their wares to others and allow those creators who buy them to move on without reinventing the wheel. Manticore Games CEO Frederic Descamps, agrees that user-generated content will provide the heart of the Metaverse.
No doubt Roblox’s version of the universe is going to be pretty blocky, but if you want realistic graphics, someone else will surely try to pull that off.
And what comes next?
That’s a lot of groundwork, but it looks like one company is going to try. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has also shown so much enthusiasm for the idea that I’m betting he’s going to invest what it takes (using Fortnite’s riches) to do Epic’s part. I have to believe that Microsoft, as the owner of Minecraft and its 200 million users, will join the race.
Hironao Kunimitsu, CEO of Japan’s Gumi (publisher of Brave Frontier), believes that VR and blockchain technologies will provide the path to the Metaverse, and he is investing in them. He even has the Oasis of Ready Player One baked into his business plan.
Entrepreneurs Raph Koster (creator of massively multiplayer online game worlds such as Star Wars: Galaxies) and Philip Rosedale (CEO of High Fidelity and creator of Second Life) believe that any Metaverse will have to have robust physics simulations, just as our own world has believable physics.
And some people believe this world will come more slowly.
“I really didn’t like the movie Ready Player One. I read the book, and I thought the movie missed it entirely. But here’s one thing you did get. I took away one point,” said Owen Mahoney, CEO of Nexon, in an interview with GamesBeat. “You get to the end of the movie and then you realize, and I do agree with this, that the future entertainment industry does not look anything like what it looks like today.”
He added, “If you live in that world enough — even with all my skepticism and I didn’t like how they missed the whole point of the game and all that stuff, I did agree with the fundamental premise, which is that this future is totally different, and we’re going to look back on the current entertainment options and say, ‘That is so 20th century. That’s so ‘OK, boomer.’’ Right now we’re having this meeting on Zoom. Right now is the time we’re going to look back on and say, ‘This is where the whole entertainment industry flipped and went to interactive.’”
It would be nice if everybody involved in this would talk to each other and figure out the plumbing, so that all of the worlds will connect. Sweeney believes this part is critical and it has to be based on open systems.
But they’re all going to try to build the biggest little Metaverse they can in hopes that it will become the one and only Metaverse. The competition will be healthy, and hopefully it will transport us out of our living rooms into someplace better and more social. I just hope that enough is happening here that nobody believes the Metaverse is a joke or a scam or a pipe dream. Because of this crazy pandemic, it is now an urgent task that we should all take seriously.